I have surgery on Thursday and I anticipate that I’ll be more or less out for 3-5 days. (Then again, they told me 3-5 days last time, and it ended up being half a day). Sorry for any delays. If you need a quick response on something, your best chance is to contact me before Wednesday night.

Besides story reviews for Robert and Joel, I believe that I’ve responded to all comments and e-mails. If you’re still waiting on a response and aren’t Robert or Joel, please feel free to repost your comment or resend your e-mail. Thanks!

2. Will you be able to easily challenge this character in a variety of scenes? (If the character is invulnerable, the answer is probably no, unless you’ve set up challenges besides trying to kill the character. Source Code was an effective example of that).

3. Will readers understand what this character can do, or is it just like the author’s making it up as he goes along? (If the character’s powers have “reality” in the name, it’s probably the latter).

4. Are the character’s powers versatile? (If your main character is a superstrong tank or a flying brick, it may help to give him a more exotic side-power to help keep his fights from getting repetitive).

5. If you’re writing a comic, will this character’s powers give you interesting visuals? (If you’re writing a novel, this isn’t nearly as important).

Boxfire Press is looking for contemporary speculative fiction and is very receptive to gay characters. Its preferred genres include contemporary sci-fi, contemporary and urban fantasy, slipstream, supernatural, paranormal, alternate history and (of course) superheroes. Their preferred length for short stories is around 5000 words but can go up to 20,000. They also do flash-fiction up to 500 words. (Hat-tip: Aponi).

How to catch their eye: “Being clear and concise, using unadorned language, concrete modifiers (only when necessary) and strong, active verbs will send your submission skyrocketing to the top. On Writing Well by William Zinsser, while specifically about non-fiction, has great advice for anyone learning to write.” Also, they are not fond of abusing substitutes for “said.”

They are separately looking for short stories to fill an anthology. “The idea is pretty simple, all the stories revolve around a red scarf lying on the road and answer the question, in some way or another, how did it get there?” (Note: This theme is just for the anthology). Story length for anthology entries: 2000-20,000 words. The preferred genres are the same as above.

For some reason, a lot of the barbs that I find most memorable are British. Probably because Americans spend too much time learning how to cook and rock out on heavy weapons platforms.

Journalist: “Is Ringo Starr the best drummer in the world?” John Lennon: “He’s not even the best drummer in the Beatles!”

Oscar Wilde: “Here are two tickets to my new play. Please bring a friend, if you have one.” Winston Churchill: “Sorry, I can’t make it to the opening night performance. Please send me tickets to the second performance, if there is one.”

Lady Astor: “Winston, if I were your wife, I would poison your coffee.” “Nancy, if I were your husband, I would drink it.”

“He loves nature, in spite of what it did to him.” — Forrest Tucker

“His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” — Mae West

“I once sent a dozen of my friends a telegram saying ‘flee at once – all is discovered.’ They all left town immediately.” — Mark Twain

“The cruelest thing that has happened to Lincoln was to fall into the hands of Carl Sandburg.” — Edmund Wilson

“In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo DaVinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love and 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” — Harry Lime, in The Third Man

We’re up to 72 superhero movies since 2000 (current as of November 2017). You can download the full data here. Some observations: R movies are making up the quality gap with PG-13 movies. Superhero movies are improving. Over the last 5 years (2013-2017), the average superhero movie is averaging 70% on Rotten Tomatoes, up […]

Hey DeadPool, You are a funny guy. How did you become a super hero? What do you do when you’re not doing anything? Do you like being a superhero? Why do you wear a mask? Why do you wear red and white? Are you Canadian? Getting superpowers is sort of a long story. Some people […]

I feel like a marketing executive put a gun to the screenwriter’s head and said “I don’t CARE what the movie is about, put New York City, London, and Hong Kong in it. Just do that thing where the villain is trying to collect plot coupons around the world in places that happen to be […]

Den Warren, (K-Tron, Metahuman Wars) is issuing a call for 3k-5k word submissions for a superhero prose fiction anthology titled, The Supreme Archvillain Election. Each submission will be a supervillain sitting at a huge table explaining why they should be voted as the Supreme Archvillain, then they go into a story, etc. Reprint excerpts and […]

1. This movie is about as bad as Catwoman but, in Catwoman’s defense, it had okay action scenes. 2. Man of Steel particularly struggled with family dialogue. E.g. Clark’s Kryptonian parents take 3 minutes to describe their plan to send him to Earth and say their goodbyes. It’s pretty bland stuff, e.g. melodramatic intonations like […]

I spent 5 hours this week watching Man of Steel and taking 5,000 words of notes. It was like being trapped on an alien planet where the atmosphere consists 80% of characters telling Clark what incredible, grandiose things he symbolizes, 20% of daringly bad action scenes, 15% of grimly constipated expressions, and 15% of acting […]

Out of the Past is a 1947 noir thriller so brilliant I cannot do it justice. I would definitely recommend it, particularly if you’re working with… Characters Plots Accidental deaths falsely claimed as murder-suicides Double-crosses, triple-crosses, and maybe a quadruple-cross depending on how you interpret a self-defense kill with a fishing reel. A complex plot […]